Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2022: Rabindranath Tagore, arguably India’s most well-known poet, reshaped Bengali literature and music. He became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Below is a list of must-read books by the litterateur.
Famous Books by Rabindranath Tagore
Gitanjali
Gitanjali is actually an anthology of poetry and is the most renowned and influential work by Rabindranath Tagore. Published originally in 1910, Tagore rereleased it as a series of translated prose poems in English, titled ‘Gitanjali: Song Offerings’, and came out in the printed form in the year 1912. W.B. Yeats authored the introduction of the English version.
Tagore was inspired by the Indian lyrics of devotion from medieval times and emphasized on ‘Love’ is the principal subject of Gitanjali. Amongst the most famous books by Rabindranath Tagore, this series was internationally lauded for its musical and rhythmic poetry and led Tagore to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.
The Postmaster
Known to be written by him in complete isolation, The Postmaster established Tagore as India’s greatest romantic as the story beautifully explores the human condition and its varied forms, from the innocence of childhood to the contrast between a bustling city and a rustic village as well as love and loss and the natural and supernatural! It is one of the best books by Rabindranath Tagore that you can pick if you are just starting out with reading his immensely rich and amazingly endearing literature!
Chokher Bali
Often referred to as the first modern Indian novel, Chokher Bali tells the story of a beautiful and educated widow Binodini in a society that believed in isolating widows from the community and leaving them for a life filled with despair and nothingness.
As a well-read woman, Binodini is aware of this negligence prevalent towards widows in her society and as the novel progresses, Tagore intricately builds a complicated web of relationships which begins with Binodini’s jealousy towards Mahim and Asha’s marital bliss and concludes with her leaving a potentially happy ending which is something largely debated on!
Gora
Amongst the long list of excellently written works by Rabindranath Tagore, Gora finely portrays the social, political, and religious society of Bengal during the colonial rule of the 1880s. It is Tagore’s fifth literary novel and brings forwards the profoundly created protagonist Gora who is fraught with philosophical questions, theological and political debate, as well as on the subjects of freedom, universal brotherhood, gender, female rights, the malaise of caste, class disparity, tradition and modernity, urban and rural gap, nationalism, colonialism, and much more.
